1904 - Westinghouse Works

In 1904 the companies making up the factories of Westinghouse Works opened their doors to movie cameras and recorded several films meant to promote their progressive labor policies.  What was produced were some visually fascinating images of turn of the century industrial America.  One film shows some two hundred women, all with their hair pulled up and their skirts to their ankles, clocking in for work.  It's a static shot of this line going by, but it is mesmerizing.  Another great shot moves above the factory floor giving a great bird's eye view of the workers doing their jobs.  These were not commercial films.  I suppose these would be the great grandfather of the industrial films companies still make today.  
I've worked in a factory, and it hasn't changed much.  People were better dressed then and more overworked than when I was in their shoes.  I'm sure it was less safe and all of that, but it sure looked cooler.  If the french fry factory I had worked for had looked a little more like a Tim Burton set maybe I would have been happier.  I can still smell that powder that rolled around in that giant drum coating the french fries with flavor.  I had to wear a surgical mask while my eyes watered.  When I took my break the inside of my mask looked like a used cigarette butt.  I remember looking around at my co-workers and feeling bad that I couldn't be like them.  They were hard workers whose dreams had long since passed them by.  They had been out in the world and knew how cruel it was.  They were thankful to have a union job that paid them decently.  For that they were willing to suck it up and work the mind-numbing hours away taking joy in a much deserved cigarette break here and there.  They were appreciative of the four hours overtime spent folding boxes.  Some were single mothers, others just out of jail.  They were poetic to me then because I fancied myself an artist of some sort.  There was a Bukowskian beauty to their downtrodden existence in my mind.  But these people were just trying to make a living and make the best of what they had.  I was eighteen.  I hadn't given up yet.  I guess I still haven't, but I'm getting closer every day.